Free Republic

Guns don’t kill people. People kill themselves. That’s the story from the American Journal of Public Health, which reports that since Barack Obama was sworn in as president in 2009, the leading cause of death in America has been suicide. During the entire administration of George W. Bush and earlier, motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of death by injury. But that all changed in 2009, with the rate of death by suicide rising by 15 percent over the past 10 years, while death by unintentional motor vehicle crash dropped 25 percent during the same period. What’s the take-away...

As we look forward to a debate this year about immigration reform, I want to share my thoughts and my past experiences on this issue. I particularly want to share my personal experience from the 1980s amnesty law and how we can learn from that debate. But, before I dive into this history, I want to commend the many senators that are working together to forge a consensus and produce a product on this terribly difficult issue. I commend them for sitting down and agreeing to a set of principles. As Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, I expect to...

An historic Northern California oyster farm along Point Reyes National Seashore will be shut down and the site converted to a wilderness area, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced on Thursday. Salazar said he will not renew the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. lease that expires Friday. The move will bring a close to a yearslong environmental battle over the site.

Community College of Allegheny County will trim hours for about 400 of its part-time workers to avoid having to provide them with health insurance coverage, the school's president, Alex Johnson, said Thursday. Mr. Johnson told members of Allegheny County Council that complying with the requirements of the federal Affordable Care Act, informally known as Obamacare, would have cost CCAC $6 million annually for part-timers who have been working at least 30 hours per week. Affected employees include both adjunct faculty and maintenance workers. CCAC has an annual operating budget of about $110 million and is facing reductions in county support...

112-Year-Old Apparel Maker In Pa. To Close Sun, 11/04/2012 - 1:20pm Michael Rubinkam, ORWIGSBURG, Pa. -- One of the last U.S. apparel manufacturers of its kind is losing its shirt. FesslerUSA had survived war and depression, free trade and foreign imports, producing millions of knitted garments from its base in eastern Pennsylvania. Five years ago, third-generation owner Walter Meck and his family were feeling so good about the company's prospects they doubled capacity, moving into a former pencil factory outside the small town of Orwigsburg. They were still setting up shop in the new place when the Great Recession hit....

Obamacare is a monumental house of horrors. Open a door and find another monster. Robert Samuelson opens the door on the law’s distinction between full-time and part-time workers. You think Obamacare might have something to do with suppressing the growth of full-time employment? Consider Samuelson’s observations.

The most common complaints by business-owners against the current administration tend to revolve around the economic uncertainty and increased regulation that have made it next to impossible to plan for the future. Stephanie Gallagher, the president of World City America Inc., is lending her voice to the fray after the Obama administration reportedly moved to prevent American cruise liners from being eligible to get the long-term financing under Title XI that make building something as massive as a cruise ship possible. As Royal Caribbean acquires its third Oasis-class ship from Finland, Gallagher writes that World City America has invested over...

If the shocking allegations contained in a lawsuit filed last Friday by responsible science advocate Steven Milloy are accurate, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a major scandal on its hands. As reported by the National Legal and Policy Center, Milloy initiated litigation in U.S. District Court in Virginia, based on evidence he accumulated via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). He alleges that the EPA engaged in disturbing experimentation that deliberately exposed human beings to airborne particulate matter the agency itself considers lethal. The experiments were conducted at EPAÂ’s Human Studies Facility at the University of North Carolina...

In its strongest ever warning, Ofgem said there may have to be “controlled disconnections” of homes and businesses in the middle of this decade because Britain has not done enough to make sure it has enough electricity. The regulator's new analysis reveals the risk of power-cuts is almost 50 per cent in 2015 if a very cold winter causes high demand for electricity. It predicts Britain will face power shortages because old coal and oil plants are being forced to shut down under the European Union’s environmental regulations. This will partly be replaced by wind farms, but they are less...

A ruling handed down on September 13th by the D.C. District Federal Court has finally made clear what many have known for years–that the Obama Administration’s Iran policy was initiated and advanced by a group with illicit, hidden ties to the Iranian Regime and financed by the U.S./Israel- hating George Soros. In 2009, Barack Obama turned over virtually all responsibility and authority for foreign policy negotiations with Iran to Trita Parsi and his National Iranian American Council (NIAC). Founded by Parsi in 2003, the Washington-based NIAC is a powerful lobbying group that is “…widely considered the de facto lobby for...

Catch phrase used in Europe to describe industry takeovers by government President Obama’s latest catch phrase, “new economic patriotism,” is neither new nor necessarily patriotic. In Europe, the term historically has had a socialist connotation. It has been used to describe the government takeover of private industry. In a two-minute Web advertisement released last Wednesday, Obama delivered a video message calling for a “new economic patriotism” that purportedly benefits the middle class while taxing the rich. “It’s time for a new economic patriotism,” Obama declared in the ad, “rooted in the belief that growing our economy begins with a strong,...

If voters knew how America’s economy would look after two terms of President Barack Obama’s administration, Mitt Romney would win in a landslide. In the 2008 campaign, President Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that the “notion of no coal … is an illusion.” He noted that he favors a cap-and-trade system, “[s]o if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” While Obama did not get to implement cap-and-trade, he found other ways to...

CREWS: Homosexuals in the military demand special privileges Toleration doesn’t cut both waysThe American armed forces exist to defend our nation, not to conduct social science lab experiments in which our troops serve as human subjects. Try telling that to this administration. The first anniversary of the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Sept. 20, has come and gone. Now, there is mounting evidence that proves our warnings were not idle chatter. The threat to freedom posed by this radical sexual experiment on our military is real: It is grave and it is growing. Activists inside and outside our...

Explanation: It's not every day that a space shuttle lands at LAX. Although this was a first for the major Los Angeles airport hub, it was a last for the space shuttle Endeavour, as it completed its tour of California skies and landed, albeit atop a 747, for the last time. During its last flight the iconic shuttle and its chase planes were photographed near several of California's own icons including the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Hollywood Sign, and the skyline of Los Angeles. Previously, in May, the space shuttle Enterprise was captured passing behind several of...

Medical care is going to get worse under Obamacare. Robert S. Dotson, M.D. tells us why: As income reductions are being imposed on private practice, costs are being driven up by exploding regulations. In addition, the plethora of new mandates and laws have increasingly criminalized every aspect of the practice of medicine and created vast new armies of armed bureaucrats whose sole aim is to impose civil and criminal penalties on any provider unlucky enough to be singled out for attention... New restrictions, rules, and regulations on healthcare – on providers and patients alike – have imposed legal constraints with...

A pro-amnesty group is forecasting that up to 1.76 million young illegal immigrants would get work permits under President Barack Obama’s de facto amnesty announced in June, amid a stalled economy and near-record levels of unemployment. That estimate is twice as large as the 800,000 new workers predicted by White House officials. Another 800,000 illegal immigrant youths will be eligible for the de facto amnesty once they graduate, said the report, released Aug. 7 by the Migration Policy Institute, a well-funded, D.C.-based pro-amnesty group. The new estimate says the de facto amnesty would add as may workers to the legal...

In the wake of the recent memo from the Obama administration which announced “prosecutorial discretion” in dealing with illegal aliens, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents across the country have been speaking out what many of them are calling a “backdoor amnesty.” On Wednesday, ICE Union president Chris Crane told PRNewswire:“Any American concerned about immigration needs to brace themselves for what's coming. This is just one of many new ICE policies in queue aimed at stopping the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in the United States. Unable to pass its immigration agenda through legislation, the Administration is now implementing it through...

According to several reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt's Great Pyramids—or, in the words of Saudi Sheikh Ali bin Said al-Rabi'i, those "symbols of paganism," which Egypt's Salafi party has long planned to cover with wax. Most recently, Bahrain's "Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs" and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt's new president, Muhammad Morsi, to "destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what Amr bin al-As could not." Has the sun finally set for Egypt's Great Pyramids? This is a reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad's companion,...

During my book "tour," radio hosts are forever asking me whether I believe that Obama is intentionally attempting to destroy America. It's a fair question, especially given the title of my book and because so many people legitimately believe he is. I have never been too receptive to conspiracy theories, and I'm not particularly enamored of ones circulating about Obama. But unlike many other such theories, this one is about a truly unprecedented assault on the American idea and on those first principles that have made America the unique experiment in constitutional governance that it has been. Ordinary people --...

J.C. Penney Co. says it is laying off 350 more workers at its headquarters in Plano as the department store struggles to transform its business under a new CEO. The cuts, announced Tuesday, follow the company's move in April to eliminate 600 workers at its headquarters.